Scribbled Paper
by swpf
Summary: This is a oneshot songfic, based on Sribbled Paper by Little Dragon. It's about Shane and Carmen, the day after series finale.


Shane was having a hard time.

She was having a hard time seeing, a hard time walking, a hard time making her body move in general. But mostly, she was having a hard time believing Jenny was dead.

She came home and looked around, feeling so out of place.

This was Jenny's house.

This was the place where all this shit started. And this was where Shane had become such great friends with the only person she knew more misunderstood than herself. This was where she'd had her first and only great love and where she retreated after her loss. This was where she'd suffered through awkward advances and fantasies of the family she never had. These were the halls that had seen so much laughter and love in so little time. This was where Shane had grown more in almost six years than she had in the previous 25 years of life.

This was Shane's home, too.

She couldn't go to her own room. She couldn't go to Jenny's either, not yet. But she knew she needed to.

She just needed to know.

She needed to know what the hell was going through her head. She thought she understood – and to be fair Jenny thought she understood Shane, and look how well that turned out. It was just less than a day ago – in fact only twenty hours ago – that Shane had seen her last, working on that video, offering to show her…

Carmen.

The ultimate sore spot.

She knew better. Jenny should've known better than to bring up Carmen. Shane had told her that she didn't want to throw out the shirts from the "Carmen Era". She didn't want to throw out Carmen. But she didn't want Jenny to bring her up, either. Even if it was just a tape, she couldn't bring herself to see her.

But, she did.

She saw Carmen on screen, in high definition, in all her shining glory, even more beautiful than Shane remembered. There was nothing Shane could do but stop and stare at the TV, drink in hand, awed look on her face. Carmen looked the same, she sounded the same, and Shane bet she even smelled the same.

And Shane missed the way she smelled.

"I can't believe she did that." Shane repeated the exact same words she'd said the night before and they were still true. She couldn't believe it. She couldn't understand it.

But she was going to.

'_Cause I went looking for a trace of something that you left _

Shane gathered what little strength she had left, since she hadn't slept all night, and went into Jenny's room. In her closet, she found the little hanging string and pulled down, opening the attic. She needed to know what else was up there.

Shane started in the spot where she'd found her jacket and the letter…

Fucking hell. Molly.

How far did Jenny's manipulation go?

Shane had left the jacket where she found it last night and now picked up. Under it there was a box of vinyl records. Carmen's records. Shane recognized the trademark scribbling of the letters CDLPM on the back of each. They couldn't be anyone else's. She ran her fingers carefully over the covers and the carelessly written script.

_And when I saw dried paint and your scribbled initials _

_I acted like I could care less while my thumb pressed to the paper _

She'd always wondered where Carmen's things had gone before she returned home from her drug binge with Cherie Jaffe. It had only been taken her a day or so to return home to find Shay on her back porch. She'd just let Jenny take care of it, although Shane guessed that Carmen must gotten most of her things some other way since there was hardly anything else of hers in the attic.

Shane stood up and gently pushed the box out of the way with her foot, but looked down when she noticed something.

_I wanted to find your portrait, wanted to have it _

It was a picture of her and Carmen at the 80's prom benefit they'd had for Max, wrinkled up and slightly torn. Shane reached down and picked it up slowly, bringing it up to her face, studying the details. Shane was wearing her little pseudo-tuxedo outfit with her arms wrapped around Carmen's waist. Carmen was leaning back into Shane, sporting her little fake Madonna outfit with her neck leaned back into Shane's shoulder, smiling because Shane had just told her she wanted to take Spanish lessons. That was the day before Carmen had denounced her family for not acknowledging her relationship with Shane and trying to set Shane up on a date with a carpet cleaner.

Shane remembered that day very well. She remembered that night even better.

"What do you know about family?" Carmen had asked her.

And even though Shane knew she didn't mean to say it, and Carmen had immediately apologized, she was right. She was completely right. What _did _Shane know about family? The closest thing she had to family was a half-brother who was abruptly taken away from her, a girl who'd probably committed suicide and let her other best friend take the fall, and…

Carmen.

_Recalling a piercing voice in old dreams_

Another thing Jenny didn't know about Shane was that she had nightmares almost every night. She didn't have them after she met Paige, but once that was over, it started again. The same thing happened during that short spurt with Molly, but they most certainly returned. Shane expected them to go away once she got involved with Jenny, but they didn't if anything they got worse and worse, especially after Jenny went through Shane's closet.

The nightmare was always the same. It was about the wedding up in Whistler. It started off the same: nice and happy, the love in Shane and Carmen's eye so obvious that you could've seen it back in LA; they're even making out in the hallway the night before the wedding. Then, the monster shows up: Gabriel McCutcheon with his charming smile and seemingly kind eyes. Everyone disappears except him and Shane, standing face-to-face, shoulder-to-shoulder, green eyes-to-green eyes.

"I'm sorry," he always says. "It's just who I am, okay?" It always same line, the same meaningless words. And then there's the heart stopper, the one that hits home.

"I know you know what I'm talking about."

That was the line that always got to Shane the most.

_**I know you know. **_

Why were people always assuming they knew Shane when nobody did, including herself. Her father thought he knew her, but he wasn't around for more than five minutes, so what the fuck did her really know? Paige thought she knew what Shane wanted, but… well that was more of a screw up on Shane's part. And Jenny…

_And ghostly images of black trains_

_Now seeing every page is turned away_

Jenny had the ability to understand anything dark about anybody that she'd ever met, mostly because she knew that she either had or could've easily done far worse. She just made the mistake of thinking she knew the one person she actually should have. The roommate she'd shared a house, a lost friend, and two sort-of shared girlfriends with.

But that was Jenny's mistake, and Shane's and her father's.

But not Carmen's.

Carmen didn't assume that she knew things about Shane. Sure, she could read her and tell when Shane was denying her feelings for her, but that wasn't an assumption. That was just perception. She had a natural curiosity and desire to be with Shane, but that was about it.

Shane was slumped over on the floor of the attic with her head bowed down and her knees drawn up to her forehead. The picture was still in her closed hand with the images of Shane and Carmen mashed closer together and wrinkled even more.

_I wanted to own your portrait_

_Wanted to have it_

For the first time in a long time – in fact since Shay had left – Shane cried. She cried long and hard about what she had lost, about who she had lost. Maybe it wasn't her fault and it was some insane all powerful being with a cruel sense of humor playing a terrible joke on her and her friends, but there also the very real possibility that it was all her fault.

But, she knew Carmen was her fault.

And so, Shane sat in the dimly lit attic, almost choking on her sobs that shook her violently. She cried long and hard at everything she hadn't cried about but needed to. Every tear, every sob, every moan, every involuntary noise and movement that came from her was the culmination of denial. Everything that she'd felt that, but she'd pushed down to deal with for later. Now was that later.

It was time for Shane to feel.

And what she felt most of all was the crumpled up picture in her hand. The freeze frame of a once happy past.

_You and your scribbled paper makes me shiver so_

_You and your scribbled paper makes me shiver so_


End file.
